Karzai and America

>(State Department photo)
Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s excellent article on the troubled American relationship with Hamid Karzai offers up a telling anecdote:
As he spoke, he grew agitated, then enraged. He told them that he now has three “main enemies” – the Taliban, the United States and the international community.
“If I had to choose sides today, I’d choose the Taliban,” he fumed.
So there you have it.
It seems to me that there are kind of two ways to think about this problematic situation. One, which seems prevalent in the relevant military circles, is to see the Afghan government as posing essentially tactical problems. Their job is to “win,” problems with the Afghan government are problems for the goal of “winning,” and so the question is about how best to manage the relationship while pursuing the goal of a “win.”
A different way of looking at it would be to say that these problems with Karzai and his government actually create different obligations and interests for us than might otherwise be the case. If the de jure government of Afghanistan were a really promising and awesome force that was having an insurgency problem and badly wanted the assistance of the United States of America, then I would say we have very compelling reasons to make good on past commitments and do our utmost to help out. But if Karzai doesn’t really want our help and isn’t interested in doing the things that we think need to be done, then the reasons for being deeply involved are much less compelling.

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KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan president on Wednesday suspended talks with the United States on a new security deal to protest the way his government was being left out of initial peace negotiations with the Taliban meant to find a way to end the nearly 12-year war.
The move by Hamid Karzai raises tensions significantly and could derail the peace process even before it has begun.

KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. forces in Afghanistan have accidentally shot dead a four year old boy, Afghan officials said on Friday, the latest violence to strain ties between the uneasy allies. The Afghan-U.S. relationship has been damaged by President Hamid Karzai's refusal to sign a bilateral security deal that would pave the way for a U.S. military presence after the withdrawal of most foreign troops this year.

President Hamid Karzai is at it again. This time he's calling out the U.S. for its fight against the Soviets in the 80s. In that decade, Washington armed the Taliban and funded the building of Madrassas in order to secure victory. For Karzai though, and many in Afghanistan, the success quickly turned into a fail.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWZ82B3Ycfw&w=640&h=390]
WASHINGTON — The State Department said Tuesday it is evaluating a video released by the Afghan Taliban showing a Canadian man and his American wife warning that their Afghan captors will kill them and their children unless the Kabul government ends its executions of Taliban prisoners.